My Canadian Book of Lists Lists: An Introduction

The First Original Unexpurgated Authentic Canadian Book
   of Lists
Jeremy Brown and David Ondaatje
Scarborough: Signet, 1979
391 pages

The First Original Unexpurgated Authentic Canadian Book of Lists isn't terribly original in that it owes its concept, format, and very existence to The Book of Lists, David Wallechinsky, Irving Wallace and Amy Wallace's runaway American bestseller.

As a teen, I had a copy of The Book of Lists (1977) and its first sequel, The Book of Lists 2 (1980), but never bought the Canadian cash in. My guess is that I never saw a copy; it would've certainly appealed to my nascent patriotism.

Does the The First Original Unexpurgated Authentic Canadian Book of Lists contain "1001 AMAZING FACTS, QUOTATIONS, ANSWERS, OPINIONS, AND STATISTICS" as claimed on the cover?

Depends on how one counts, I suppose.  

Frankly, I think Signet was selling its authors short. The book features over 350 lists divided into twenty-one categories. At 43 pages, "Sports" is easily the longest. "Private and Confidential," five pages, dealing  with the bedrooms of the nation, is the shortest by far.

Nowhere near long enough and over all too quickly.

The longest, THE 16 GREATEST PROBLEMS FACING LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCIES IN CANADA, comes courtesy of His Honour Judge Philip Givens, Chairman of the Board of Commissioners, Metropolitan Police Force. The shortest, as short as a list can be, is credited to Claire Wallace, author of Mind Your Manners: 2 IMPORTANT ITEMS OF NATIONAL ETIQUETTE CANADIANS SHOULD RESPECT.

The majority, an even three hundred lists, have ten entries each. These alone suggest 3000 facts... or maybe not. The First Original Unexpurgated Authentic Canadian Book of Lists is at once a fact-checkers nightmare and a walk through a different time. Let's take a stroll through the first five:

1. 10 GREAT CANADIAN QUOTATIONS ON CANADIANS

The book's first list contains the first two errors: Northrop Frye is referred to as ""Northrup Frye." Susanna Moodie is "Susanna Moddie."

2. 10 CANADIANS WHO DIED TOO YOUNG

The errors in the second list are numerous. Norman Bethune was born in 1890, not 1899. The doctor was forty-nine when he died. John Sparrow Thompson, our fourth prime minster, was born in 1845, not 1844. Tom Thomson met his end at thirty-nine, not forty. Tim Horton died in February 1974, not September 1974. At the time of his murder, Pierre Laporte held two ministerial portfolios, not one. George McCuklagh, the publisger who married the Toronto Globe and Mail and Empire, did not die in an accident, rather he took his own life. Bill Barilko was killed more than four months after scoring his legendary goal, which I would argue was not "almost immediately after the game."

3. 10 PEOPLE MOST LIKELY TO INFLUENCE THE COURSE OF EVENTS IN CANADA

The book's third list comes courtesy of Peter C. Newman, then Editor of Maclean's. His number one is John Turner, after whom we find Conrad Black. Number three is Brian Mulroney: "Bicultural, brilliant, and beautiful, he is the dream incarnation of the Conservative party. Some day they'll realize it and he will become Prime Minister of Canada." This is, of course, the very same beautiful man who would one day tell Newman to go fuck himself.

4. THE 10 MOST EXCLUSIVE MEN'S CLUBS IN CANADA

An odd inclusion, particularly so early in the book, but given the focus on male opinion, mortality, and power of the previous three could male privilege be so far behind?

For anyone who cares, Toronto's York Club tops the list.

5. 10 WELL-KNOWN DIVORCED OR SEPARATED CANADIANS

1.   PIERRE ELLOTT TRUDEAU, prime minister

2.   RENÉ LÉVESQUE, Quebec premier

3.   FRANCIS FOX, former Solictor-General

4.   GORDON LIGHTFOOT, singer

5.   PETER WORTHINGTON, Editor-in-Chief, The Toronto Sun

6.   ADRIENNE CLARKSON, television performer, author

7.   CAROLE TAYLOR, former television star

8.   PETER C. NEWMAN, Editor, Maclean's Magazine

9.   LYNNE GORDON, broadcaster, head of Ontario 

         Women's Task Force

10. JOYCE DAVIDSON, television broadcaster 

This is another list that surprises, not because it comes so early, or is so random, but because it achieves something close to gender parity. Consider the previous four:

• three of the 10 GREAT CANADIAN QUOTATIONS ON CANADIANS were made by women;
• all 10 CANADIANS WHO DIED TOO YOUNG are men;
• two women feature in 10 PEOPLE MOST LIKELY TO INFLUENCE THE COURSE OF EVENTS IN CANADA, one of whom is the list makers's 14-year-old daughter;
• THE 10 MOST EXCLUSIVE MEN'S CLUBS IN CANADA.

I add that four of the forty persons featured in the first five lists are francophones. Not one would've then be termed "Indian."

This is indicative of the 350 or so lists that follow. It's not that The First Original Unexpurgated Authentic Canadian Book of Lists focusses on Anglo-Canada, rather that it is Toronto-centric. Consider 10 WELL-KNOWN DIVORCED OR SEPARATED CANADIANS: Peter Worthington, Adrienne Clarkson, Carole Taylor, Peter C. Newman, Lynne Gordon, Joyce Davidson... You get the picture.

Still, for all its faults, The First Original Unexpurgated Authentic Canadian Book of Lists inspires. And so, over the next four days, I'll be posting my own lists, each dealing with The First Original Unexpurgated Authentic Canadian Book of Lists. Carole Taylor, "former television star," will reappear in tomorrow's list. For now, I'll leave you with this.

Object and Access: A mass market paperback with the laziest and cheapest of designs. The interior apes The Book of Lists.  

The First Original Unexpurgated Authentic Canadian Book of Lists was first published in 1978 by the late Pagurian Press. I've yet to stumble upon a copy though one – and only one – is listed for sale online at $8.00. Likewise, just one copy of the Signet edition is listed. Price: $10.00. 

My copy was purchased three years ago. It set me back $2.00.

Happy Canada Day!

Related post:

On Addressing a Duke's Eldest Son's Younger Son

Resuming Richard Rohmer: A Plea for Help

Four years ago this month, I set out to read every book ever written by Richard Rohmer.

It wasn't my idea.

My old pal Chris Kelly came up with the challenge, mutual old pal Stanley Whyte joined in, and we were off. Not only were we going to read Rohmer's entire bibliography, we were going to do it within the year!

We're still at it.

Our mistake was that we remembered Rohmer's years as a bestselling author, but ignored the decades in which he was not. We'd assumed his books would be plentiful, accessible, and cheap. Why, mere days before we began, I picked up his 1989 thriller Red Arctic for a buck in a Perth, Ontario bookstore.

What I failed to recognize is that it was the first copy I'd ever seen. I haven't come across another since. I didn't know that Red Arctic had come and gone in only one printing, and had never made it to paperback. As a kid, Rohmer mass markets were everywhere. I bought mine at the second closest drug store to my home, but I could've just as easily bought them at the closest. It has been over three decades since Rohmer was last published in mass market.

Rohmer's Ultimatum was the bestselling Canadian novel of 1973, but my local library doesn't have a copy; in fact, the St Marys Public Library doesn't have anything by Richard Rohmer. Its helpful staff did all they could in providing inter-library loans.

Stanley had access to slim holdings offered by McGill and Concordia, but these only went so far. He resorted to ordering one book directly from the publisher. It took several months to arrive.

Chris, who lives in California, had the hardest time of it.

Despite the challenges, we tackled sixteen titles in our first year, and wrote about each in a blog: Reading Richard Rohmer. Visitors will see that we slowed to eight in the second year. In year three, we tackled two: Raleigh on the Rocks and Ultimatum 2. Last year, our reading was Rohmerless.

I began 2018 determined to finish reading Richard Rohmer. We're four books shy:

• Practice and Procedure Before the Highway Transport Board (1965)
• The Royal Commission on Book Publishing (1972)
• The Building of the CN Tower (2011)
• The Building of the Sky Dome/Rogers Centre [sic] (2012)

The first two are held at the University of Western Ontario's D.B. Weldon Library. As reference material, they're not to be checked out, but I'm willing to suffer as many hours as it takes in that butt-ugly, brutalist building.

Such is my willpower and dedication that I plan to read all four, despite reservations concerning Rohmer's authorship of Practice and Procedure Before the Highway Transport Board and The Royal Commission on Book Publishing. Sure, they appear in his bibliographies, but like Rohmer's claims about taking Rommel out of the Second World War, I have doubts that he played so great a role.

I look forward to being proven wrong.

Remarkably, the most recent titles are more difficult to find than half-century-old government reports. After many, many months, I've finally managed to get my hands on The Building of the CN Tower, but The Building of the Sky Dome/Rogers Centre is proving even more elusive. And so, I ask anyone with a copy to contact me.

Please.

Four years is an awfully long time.

Related posts:

Resolved to Reading Richard Rohmer

Still Reading Richard Rohmer. Is Alice Munro?
Recycling Richard Rohmer

Richard Rohmer Recycles (Again)

Of Thucydides, Themistocles and Richard Rohmer

Chasing Down a Thriller Writer's Hidden Verse
Pornography Dressed Up as a Cautionary Tale
Learn to Write the Richard Rohmer Way
The Brexit Fix-It

The Trudeau Papers: Bang!

The Trudeau Papers
Ian Adams
Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1971

Thucydides wrote that Themistocles' greatness lay in the fact that he realized Athens was not immortal. I think we have to realize that Canada is not immortal; but, if it is going to go, let it go with a bang rather than a whimper. 

— Pierre Elliott Trudeau, 30 March 1988

Beginning our sesquicentennial year with a novel imaging Canada's demise might be an odd choice were it not for the deafening roar heard from south of our border. How long before the first major fuck-up of the Trump presidency? I'm betting on this month.

The fuck-up described in this debut novel is monumental. The CIA manages to recruit a brilliant Red Army computer analyst, tasks him with testing the security of the Soviet's "fail-safe computer firing program", and then forgets he ever existed.

Bureaucracy is to blame, which isn't to say that there aren't benefits to be had.

Two SS-9s head for American bases in Montana and North Dakota, and the Soviets can do nothing to stop them. Their Premier alerts the President of the United States of the situation, but is unable to convince him that it is all a mistake. Fortunately, Trump the President knows nothing of the Bible and so cannot recall the quotation used in the nuclear code ("Unto God would I commit my cause." – Job 5:8). Unfortunately – for Canada – the U.S. Strategic Missile Command manages to intercept both missiles, resulting in nuclear explosions above Edmonton and southern Saskatchewan.

One million people die.

Within two weeks, the number triples. It grows exponentially as children succumb to leukaemia, their elders shed skin and hair, and Canadians of all ages are sprayed repeatedly with Agent Orange.

After the Prime Minister's plane goes down on a return flight from Washington, the United States takes advantage of misplaced Soviet guilt. Its military moves north on the pretence of securing American-owned industry, while right-wing vigilantes with ties to the CIA take to the streets. Bookstore owners are beaten, and left-leaning student leaders are strung up on the rafters of Varsity Stadium.

Were it not so dense, I'd consider this 108-page "Novel by Ian Adams" a novella; were it not so complex, I might be dismissive. The Trudeau Papers is a remarkable and unusual novel. Its title is explained by narrator Alan Jarvis, a former journalist who has been entrusted by fellow members of the resistance to record what has happened since the two SS-9s exploded:

The name seemed to evoke a collective sense of grim irony. Personally, I think there title is unimportant, considering the enormity of what has taken place, and how much of it has been documented. The rather vague explanation for the choice was that as one of the last democratically elected prime ministers, his name symbolized the end of a nation. So be it.

The "vague explanation" works well. Jarvis himself was once a former CIA operative – and it could be that he is still. Nothing in The Trudeau Papers is cut and dry; nothing is black and white. I came to trust him, but not so much that I won't understand your distrust.

The Trudeau Papers takes place sometime after 1975... but when?

And so, on this second day of our sesquicentennial year, a new question arises: Which Trudeau?

Addendum: This post is the second – after my review of Richard Rohmer's Triad – to include the Trudeau quote above. Again, is it not incredible that we once had a prime minister who could speak about Thucydides on Themistocles?

Object and access: A slim novel in orange boards with uncredited dust-jacket, I bought my copy twenty-seven years ago at S.W. Welch in Montreal. Price: $1.00. Eighteen years earlier, this very same copy was a Christmas gift from journalist Peter C. Newman to John Payne. I'm guessing that this is the same John Payne who once served as an adviser to future PM John Turner (and not the man who starred opposite Maureen O'Hara in Miracle on 34th Street).

It appears there was no a second printing. Remarkably, there has never been a paperback edition.

Ranging at prices between US$3.48 and $17.54, eight copies are listed for sale online. Condition is not a factor.